Israel and the Gaza strip

This seems an intractable problem. The Israelis will not allow ships etc to go to Gaza as they fear smuggling of arms and rockets. Hamas responds by smuggling through tunnels from Egypt.The whole Palestinian embryo State has been seeking statehood for years but even they cannot show a united front. The Israelis continue to build in disputed land. Iran stirs it up in the background. The Israeli response to rocket attacks is disproportionate. The whole thing could get out of hand. Talks seem a waste of time as each side loathes the other. How depressing; there seems little hope for peace in our time.

I agree - mine was a very brief summary to get a thread going. I had it on very good authority recently that the UK defence top brass are thinking that the next big problem after the Afghanistan withdrawal is Iran and the whole Middle East.I also agree with Fruit Bat re relatively peaceful times, but I fear breakers ahead in the Middle East with so much hatred around.

I've declared war on the gnats that appear on my windows [inside windows] ... I just squash them against the window-pane but next morning, dozens of 'em reappear for the same punishment; if I were to put my plant pots outside the gnats would be free to do as they please.

Israel treats it's neighbours in a similar way ... this is just my opinion.

Southern Israelis who live near the border with Gaza are in a constant state of tension. They fear (and with good reason) the rocket attacks that are a feature of the state of more or less permanent conflict.

Israel's justification for its retaliation is that its citizens are entitled to live without this constant threat.Israel regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

Both sides want something - Hamas desperately needs the Gaza/Israel cargo crossings open. Israel wants the Palestinian attacks to cease, a truce that is internationally supervised, and the re-arming of Hamas to stop.

All of that is incidental to what is at the real heart of the matter, and that's land. It has been a central issue for decades, and the way things look at the moment there is virtually no hope of any kind of lasting settlement. People on both sides are killed, and that breeds a burning desire for revenge in the young of both Palestinians and Israelis alike. It's a self-perpetuating situation.

If the situation escalates and other parts of Arabia are drawn into the conflict and it turns into a much nastier situation there's a possibility countries like Russia (another nutter in power) can intervene and where do we go from there?

Mushroom clouds are so pretty, and I love the smell of nuclear fallout in the morning.

We must all hope the MAD principle will still deter.
It seems unlikely that any 'small' player would instigate a nuclear exchange when their own lands would be the first to be razed to the ground by the 'big boys'.

A terrorist nuclear device in a suitcase is a much bigger threat, however.

Trouble now is there are not just the two old combatants (US/USSR) - so keeping a lid on things becomes that much harder than in the old days.

spider9 - "A terrorist nuclear device in a suitcase is a much bigger threat, however." There is some doubt that such devices exist and if they do then probably only USA, Russia or China would be able to create one. A nuclear bomb is a difficult device to construct. A greater threat could be a dirty bomb.

Nobody is going to start a nuclear war over the Israel/Palestine conflict. At the moment the current situation is one of many that have occurred between the two countries over the years. It isn't on the scale of the 2009/10 conflict, but this time it has been made rather more serious by the fact of Israel's assassination of Ahmed Jabari, the leader of Hamas's military wing. That kind of thing isn't quickly forgotten, and the mood in Gaza is one of aggression. It will take a great deal of clever talking to get both sides to agree to, and abide by a cease-fire.

At the moment the whole Middle east region is less stable than it has been for around 50 years. Syria is tearing itself apart, and Lebanon is too involved with Syria to stay out of that. The Egyptian situation has changed drastically since the departure of Mubarak, and Egypt can no longer be relied upon to provide a calming influence - Mubarak's successor is a Hamas supporter, and so is Turkey. Both those countries are going to publicly support a cease fire but the fact of their support for Hamas is going to give that organisation the impetus it needs to continue the fight.